Does the Sheep know what is in the fleece,
or wilt thou go ask the Alpaca?
Can Wisdom be put in a wood needle,
or Love in an overplied single?

Wednesday, July 04, 2012

Shawls shawls shawls

Now that the summer is here I'm hoping to knit a lot more. This has been a year of shawls- I think I've knit four so far- and I have the yarn for a lot more.

The top secret shawl that got me a shout out on the Terminus City Wranglers 'I Saw You' thread on Ravelry. It's an incredibly cheerful yellow so a fellow knitter driving saw me knitting at a bus stop. This first pictures is two days in to the shawl, knitting at a furious pace in order to be done for my sister's birthday.....

And here is it significantly later after being frogged. I picked up the wrong needle size when I first started and as my friend Nina pointed out 'it'd be a good size for Hazel'. Least to say I did not finish it on time for my sister's birthday.

There was more shawl drama when I ran out of yarn for the cast off. I was well over 500 stitches for the cast off and due to the ruffle was doing a tedious and yarn sucking cast off called Russian Bind Off. After posting for help on Ravelry, I tinked my cast off about 70 stitches then switched to a lace cast off with little intervals of crochet cast off every seven stitches or so. Thankfully it didn't make too much of a difference and the shawl turned out awesome.

I realized I never showed you the finished Rock Island. I've never gotten so many compliments on a shawl ever. Even my teaching partner who shows about as much interest in knitting as I show in Elvis looked at it and went 'huh- that looks complicated'.